Shadle Park’s Justin Solt is one of few players to achieve baseball’s holy grail

There are rare events in the world of sport.

Bowling’s 300 game. Golf’s hole-in-one.

And then there’s baseball’s holy grail: the Perfect Game.

In the history of major league baseball, there have been just 23 perfect games.

“My coach told me that in all his years coaching, more than 30 years, he’d never seen a perfect game,” Shadle Park senior Justin Solt said. “It’s one of the biggest feats a pitcher can do.”

Solt knows that very well.

On March 28, Solt needed just 53 pitches to record 15 outs in a 14-0 win over Ferris in a Greater Spokane League game. He did not give up a hit, he did not issue a walk and no Saxon reached base.

A perfect game.

“When I was younger I would play catch with my dad,” Solt said. “He’d get down (in a catcher’s crouch) and we’d work on counts. He’d tell me, ‘You can’t walk guys. You have to be efficient.’ I guess it all started then.”

In many ways, pitching a perfect game is like trying to hold water in a clenched fist: The harder you squeeze, the more it gets away from you.

“I tried not to think about it – as a pitcher you don’t want to jinx it by thinking about it,” Solt said. “I just tried to throw strikes.

“By the fourth or fifth inning, the game had gone by so fast. It occurred to me that I hadn’t given up any hits and no one had reached base. In that game I didn’t ever get to a three-ball count on anyone.”

Mostly, he said, he tried to stay calm.

“Last year I came into the season with very high expectations,” Solt explained. “It turned out to be a very frustrating year. I lost a lot of games 2 to 1 or 3 to 2.

“This year I just wanted to relax and have fun. Our whole staff focuses on relaxing and not letting bad things affect us. If you don’t get a call you wanted or someone makes an error behind you, you can’t let that get to you and you just have to get right back on it and do your job. We’re all doing a good job of that.”

That sense of calm earned Shadle Park a third-place finish in the Greater Spokane League and sends the Highlanders into a loser-out game with Kennewick Saturday at Southridge High.

A perfect game hangs in everyone’s memory. Just ask Hayden Lake’s Don Larsen about his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.

“It’s been more than month since that game and my friends still ask me, ‘Are you going to throw a perfect game again today?’ ” Solt laughed. “I tell them, ‘Do you have any idea how rare a perfect game is?’ They always laugh and say, ‘We’re just messin’ with you.’ ”

Solt put in the hard work to make himself ready for his senior season – never anticipating that it would include a magical afternoon against the Saxons.

“I put in a lot of work over the winter,” he said. “I throw four pitches: a fastball, curve, slider and change-up. This winter I really wanted to work on my fastball velocity and my control.”

Solt’s fastball works in the high 80s, and in previous years he threw his curve more for the change of pace than for the break. The slider only made an occasional appearance.

This year he’s worked with his pitching coach to develop a better change-up.

“Before this year I didn’t really have a change-up because there wasn’t a big difference in velocity between it and my fastball,” he said. “We worked on it and it’s much better this year. I have about a 10- to 12-mile-per-hour difference now and I have good command with it.”

Command is the key to Solt’s effectiveness.

“In the Ferris game I was really hitting my catcher’s glove,” he said. “He’d set a target and I was hitting it with my fastball. When you can do that, you get credit for it from umpires. Even if your catcher is setting up just a bit outside, if you hit the glove they will give you the strike. Not much outside, but enough to make a batter chase it a bit.”

Along the way, Solt caught the attention of the coaches at Lower Columbia College in Longview. The Red Devils have long been a baseball power among the area’s two-year colleges, winning 37 division titles and 11 NWAC championships. Along the way LCC has had 77 players drafted by Major League Baseball in its annual amateur draft, and there currently are 12 players from the school playing for Division I college programs.

The school offered a scholarship and Solt signed a national letter of intent.

“That’s what caught my attention – that they would do a good job of getting me to the next level,” he said. “My best friend is going to play at Spokane Falls and he did his best to talk me into playing there. It’s going to be tough for me to leave my friends and move across the state, but I think it’s the best move for me.”